


Rooftop Symphony

by patiently_yours



Series: This Moment, Right Now [4]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5335868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patiently_yours/pseuds/patiently_yours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phryne is injured whilst on an investigation, raising questions and stealing peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rooftop Symphony

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my head for an age, but has taken quite some time to find its way into words. It stands alone (so there won't be any more chapters), but the series will continue past it. Also, all that I know of Melbourne comes from my housemate who is from there, so I'm sorry for any inaccuracies!

The branches of the gum trees clacked against the roof and walls of the warehouse, filling the quiet of the night and making it difficult for Phryne to sense the presence of any danger. Jack was behind her, since he had insisted on giving her a boost up the wall since she had insisted upon wearing heels to the crime scene, and she found her awareness reaching behind her as well as before her to make sure that he was safe.

The wind picked up with a bite in it that promised that winter was coming, and Phryne shivered. Her senses were uncomfortably awake, and while she wasn’t afraid of the potential danger, she still felt unaccountably on edge. Her fingers tightened around the pistol in her hand, her forefinger stroking the trigger reassuringly. This was no different from any other time that she and Jack had followed a lead. Here, they were always in tandem, as they were learning to be in other areas of their lives.

“Phryne, get down,” hissed Jack, and Phryne heard the high-pitched whistle of an object thrown past her ear at great speed before she bore the brunt of Jack’s weight and found her cheek smashed into the roof tiles. The breath was knocked out of her lungs, and adrenaline coursed through her veins, and her arms vibrated as shots rang out from Jack’s gun. She would never understand the male instinct to flatten anything vulnerable at the first sign of danger, but every time that bullets started flying, Phryne seemed to find herself pinned under Jack. Not that she was complaining.

But Jack’s aim was not true in the darkness, and the footsteps receded until they heard the clatter of somebody climbing over the fence that surrounded the warehouse. Jack lifted himself from on top of Phryne and offered a hand to help her up, then froze.

“Phryne, don’t move,” he said, pressing a hand to her chest to still her as she struggled to rise. Even in the darkness, Phryne could tell that the blood had drained from his face, and she felt a trickle of fear make its way down her spine.

“Is it a spider?” she asked breathlessly, irrationally.

Jack touched her ear, and as he did, she felt sharp pain crawl from her knees, her ribs, her cheek, and find its way there. When he pulled his hand away, it was covered in blood.

Her blood.

“My ear-” she began.

“It’s still there,” Jack reassured her quickly. “It’s just a graze.”

“A graze doesn’t bleed like that,” Phryne told him, reaching for his hand and meeting his eyes as her rational, crisis-handling mind kicked in. “Get me off of this roof, and take me to Mac’s.”

“Phryne, you need-”

Phryne squeezed Jack’s hand so hard that his knuckles cracked.

“Jack Robinson, you listen to me,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “If you do not get me off of this roof and take me to Elizabeth MacMillan’s house, I will make damn well sure that you regret this night for a very long time.”

Jack did not seem interested in testing the truth behind Phryne’s threat, and she found herself wrapped carefully over his shoulders as he found his way down from the roof.

_

 

The sky was brightening as Phryne flicked on the lamps in her room and lowered herself onto her bed, groaning quietly as Jack slid her shoes off of her feet. That done, he handed her the dressing gown that had been laid across the foot of the bed, which she ignored as she slowly, painstakingly, pulled her blouse over her head. It caught on her recently-stitched ear, and she hissed, sinking back into the mattress.

“Let me,” said Jack, the first words he’d uttered since the botched operation on the warehouse roof, and Phryne sat completely still as he pulled the blouse away from her head. He unbuttoned her trousers, letting her lean against him as he pulled them down her legs. His fingers lingered on her ankles, and his lips brushed against the inside of her knee, and Phryne sighed.

“Jack,” she whispered, reaching for him.

Jack shook his head and eluded her grasp, walking away from her and leaning on the doorframe.

His face gave away that he was choking on words that he refused to say, and his hands clenched and unclenched in his pockets. Phryne could feel him pull into himself as he swallowed the emotions that threatened to burst out. Anger burned in Phryne’s gut as she watched him battle to hold himself from her, but before she could act on it and demand that he get over himself, the compassion that she always found for him won out. The anger fell out of her body in one breath, and she pushed herself back against the headboard and let herself be supported by her mountain of pillows.

“Jack, I’m safe,” she said finally, looking down at her knicker-clad body, still in one piece after the night’s events. Her ear hadn’t escaped unscathed, it was true, but Mac had stitched it back into one whole piece, and soon she would be as good as new, with a shiny scar to show for it.

“But you nearly weren’t,” Jack countered, his eyes running down her limbs, checking again that she was all right.

Phryne clenched her fingers. It was always back to the same argument with them, the same stand off, the facing of facts, negotiations, regrouping, coming together again. And she hadn’t the energy for it, not this time.

“You know who I am,” she told him, her voice low, her eyes trained carefully on his shoulder to avoid the haunted look in his eye. “And you know that I cannot change it, even for you, Jack Robinson.”

His voice, when he finally spoke, was so raw that it drew tears to Phryne’s eyes.

“I would never ask you to,” he said, taking one faltering step toward the bed, his hands held out beseechingly. “I’ve known from the day when I stood with you on the roof of the train to Ballarat that you had an insatiable thirst for danger.”

“And an incurably nosy streak,” admitted Phryne begrudgingly. “I can’t bear to know that these investigations are going on and to not be a part of them. And you can’t possibly ask me to.”

“But Phryne, you shouldn’t have even been there tonight,” said Jack, sinking onto the edge of her bed, his fingers gripping her knee tightly. “I should have had a constable there with me, somebody whose job it is to accompany me on investigations. It was much too dangerous a situation for a civilian to be in, even if that civilian is you.”

“We have been in much more dangerous situations before,” Phryne told him, covering his hand with her own to keep his fingers from digging into the sides of her knee. “And if Hugh had been there, and if he had been hurt, I shudder to think of how Dot would have reacted.”

“Regardless, it is Collins’s job to be in danger in the line of duty-” began Jack.

“As it is mine!” interjected Phryne. “I am a private detective, Jack, not to mention your consult on this case-”

“Not anymore,” interrupted Jack.

“Jack!” exclaimed Phryne.

Jack shook his head, his fingers skittering down her legs, which she promptly pulled into her chest, a barrier against him and a belated attempt to protect the heart that was being unceremoniously smashed.

“I’m not saying every case,” said Jack slowly, not daring to meet her eyes. “Just not this one. I could have lost you tonight, Phryne. Another few centimetres to the left, and that knife would have impaled your eye, or been imbedded in your brain.”

Phryne’s retort that she wasn’t Jack’s to lose died on her tongue as the sobering images of her near-death filled her mind’s eye. She had known, up on that roof, the fear that the unseen danger would manage to get Jack in spite of her presence. And just because he was the one who had faced that fear tonight did not mean that she didn’t understand it.

So they were at a stalemate, and the clock on the mantle ticked the seconds of their silence loudly. The sun rose, its golden fingers finding their way around the edges of the drapes, and the milk wagon clattered down the street. In Phryne’s room, darkness still reigned. Jack’s face was shadowed, haunted, and no amount of whisky or kisses could take away the reality he’d been faced with again tonight.

“So what do we do now?” asked Phryne when she could bear the quiet no longer. She was not one to silently suffer, nor did she regularly hide her feelings where her heart was involved. She was a woman of action, and the only one who could pull from Jack the words for what he was feeling.

“I don’t know,” admitted Jack. “I don’t know how I can live nights like this again, knowing that your life is in danger, knowing that I could lose you at any moment-”

“Knowing that I love it,” whispered Phryne.

“And for that reason I could never ask you not to do it,” Jack finished.

Phryne pressed her cheek to her knees and watched Jack for a moment before she spoke.

“I’ve never asked you to rescue me,” she told him finally. “And I’ve never needed you to protect me. I’m not a damsel in distress, or a fainting heroine in a novel.”

Jack smiled at her, a lopsided smile that held no humour.

“And you’re not mine to lose,” he told her.

Phryne shook her head, her hair falling around her face. She found herself uncharacteristically wanting to hide as vulnerability welled in her gut and found its way into words.

“I don’t think that’s true anymore, do you?” she asked him.

He didn’t reach for her, although he wanted to, and she didn’t ask him to hold her, because she couldn’t. The silence and a question stretched between them, unasked and unanswered, a haunting, hollow symphony.

It was Jack who found his courage first.

“Well, Miss Fisher, what do we do now?”


End file.
